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By CASSIDY MORRISON, US SENIOR HEALTH REPORTER
Published: 19:56 GMT, 27 February 2026 | Updated: 22:17 GMT, 27 February 2026
Deaths from severe first heart attacks among those under 55 jumped over the past decade, indicating that young adults should be as concerned about their heart attack risk as their older counterparts.
There is a troubling rise in young people suffering from catastrophic heart attacks, a deadly health event long thought to be reserved for people in their 60s and beyond, new research shows.
The risk of dying from a heart attack on average has dropped nearly 90 percent since the 1990s, but the number of adults 18 to 54 in whom a heart attack, especially their first heart attack, ends up being fatal is increasing year over year at a concerning pace.
In a study published this week, a group of international researchers and cardiologists found that deaths from severe first heart attacks among adults 18 to 54 rose 57 percent between 2011 and 2022, driven in large part by high rates of diabetes, chronic kidney disease and drug use.
Researchers analyzed data on first-time heart attacks among young adults ages 18 to 54 in the US from 2011 to 2022. They looked at two types of heart attacks: a STEMI, the more deadly kind, and a non-STEMI (NSTEMI), and separated findings by sex.
The main focus was on who died in the hospital and whether death rates changed over time. They also tracked complications and considered both traditional risk factors, like smoking and high blood pressure, and nontraditional ones, including sleep or mental health.
Women consistently faced worse outcomes than men, receiving fewer procedures and dying at higher rates. When it came to predicting death, nontraditional factors, like stress, sleep, and mental health, mattered more than the usual suspects, including age, smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity.
Roughly 805,000 Americans have a heart attack each year, translating to one every 40 seconds. Of those, at least 285,000 experience a STEMI, which kills up to 10 percent of patients when caught early, a rate that shoots up to 38 percent when a person enters cardiac arrest.
The first sign of a heart attack for 24-year-old Raquel Hutt [pictured] was a sudden, searing pain in her left arm. She described it as the most intense pain she had ever felt
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Dr Mohan Satish, a cardiologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and the study’s lead author, said: ‘We often think heart attacks are mainly an older person’s problem; however, our findings indicate that younger adults, especially women, are at real risk.’
Researchers analyzed almost one million hospital records from a national database, focusing on adults 18 to 54 who were hospitalized for their first heart attack between 2011 and 2022, according to the latest report in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
EXCLUSIVE Doctors reveal signs a young and 'super-fit' person is about to suffer heart attack amid surge
The cases were separated into two groups: STEMI and NSTEMI.
A STEMI happens when a coronary artery is completely blocked, cutting off blood flow to a large area of heart muscle and requiring immediate emergency care.
An NSTEMI involves a partial blockage or a temporary closure that still damages the heart but does not meet the criteria for a STEMI.
What makes the study unique is what the researchers accounted for. They did not just look at traditional risk factors.
Researchers also examined income, mental health, drug use, inflammatory diseases and pregnancy complications, allowing them to pinpoint what truly predicts death.
Matias Escobar [pictured] nearly died from a heart attack competing in the New York City Triathlon, despite cholesterol and blood pressure readings that had all checked out beforehand
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The study revealed several major findings, with the first being that deaths from a first-time STEMI saw a 57 percent relative increase that held up even after researchers accounted for all known risk factors.
Death rates due to NSTEMI held steady, though, at just under one percent throughout the study period.
